


Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand

by Srin



Series: Let lips do what hands do [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to not actually lovers yet but give them maybe a week, Feelings, Kindness, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25923139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Srin/pseuds/Srin
Summary: Even if it were possible, a return to things as they were does not feel like much of a choice. More like surrender, like succumbing to a tide that would sweep him back into that numbing sea of alienation in which he has been drowning these last weeks. But if not that, then what?Nicolò says nothing, just watches Yusuf. Nicolò’s eyes look like a sea too, Yusuf thinks, but not a sea for drowning.-Yusuf and Nicolò die, and kill each other, and nothing changes. Until it does.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Let lips do what hands do [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006677
Comments: 38
Kudos: 321





	Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: The violence isn't really all that graphic, but there is a fair amount of focus on the resulting blood. There are also references to the permanent deaths of people other than Nicolò and Yusuf. 
> 
> Historical accuracy: I made the classic historical fiction error of getting attached to a narrative first and doing the research second, whoops. So I think I’ve ended up exaggerating how much hand-to-hand combat actually went on before the final stage of the siege of Jerusalem, and there’s probably some fudging on a few other points as well, but hopefully it isn’t too implausible. 
> 
> Linguistic notes: Many of the places that are mentioned would have slightly or significantly different names in the languages the characters are actually talking and thinking in, but I’ve stuck to the English versions for the sake of simplicity. Sabir is another name for the Mediterranean Lingua Franca - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca

* * *

Jerusalem, 10 July 1099

* * *

The deathless Frank is back. There is nothing that distinctive about his dress or equipment but nevertheless, Yusuf’s gaze seems to be drawn unerringly to him whenever he appears on the field.

By the time they first met in battle, Yusuf had already died and reawakened two or three times. He thought, at first, that Allah wanted him to kill the invader he had been seeing in his dreams since his first resurrection, that this was the reason for his bewildering invulnerability. For some reason this Frank in particular had to die, and Yusuf had to be the one to kill him. When the man’s sword sank into Yusuf’s gut at the very moment that Yusuf’s plunged into his chest, Yusuf believed his purpose had been fulfilled, that this time his death would not be undone, and sought to make his peace before the darkness closed in. When he woke yet again, to the sight of the other man waking too, he realised that it would not be so simple.

No one else has discovered Yusuf’s secret yet. The first time, when he awoke unblemished amongst the bodies that had been retrieved and returned to the city, everyone assumed he had simply taken a blow to the head or fainted from too much exertion in the heat, and he did not tell them otherwise, though he remembered well the shock of a sword thrust into his back. Since then, he has always woken before the fighting is over, and managed to convince anyone who thought they saw him killed or seriously wounded that it must have been someone else, or that he was lucky and it was not so bad as it appeared. In the barracks, he avoids bathing or undressing in front of anyone who might remark on the absence of cuts and bruises on his body, and on the field he keeps away from those that know him well or have already witnessed one of his ‘near misses’.

For a while, fighting the deathless Frank was almost enjoyable. Like being back on the training ground, crossing wooden weapons with his friends, relishing the chance to hone his skills while risking no more than some temporary discomfort. All the thrill of victory without the weight of knowing that the cost of his triumph was another man’s life. They were well-matched, and for a time the sport of it was a welcome distraction from the real, lasting pain and death all around them, from the gnawing fear and emptiness that crept in whenever Yusuf allowed himself to think too much about his inexplicable situation.

But the novelty is gone now, along with any satisfaction in the act of battle, any relief at finding himself still in the world after another mortal wound. No matter how many times he kills the deathless Frank, no matter how many of the other invaders he kills, they keep coming. And every man the Franks cut down is one man less to stand between their savagery and the innocents inside the city. The people Yusuf came to protect, what seems like lifetimes ago now though in truth it is a matter of weeks. Other people had seemed so important, then.

Each time Yusuf falls and rises again, he feels that much more removed from everyone around him, more detached from what his life had been before he came here. He had been popular among his companions once, always ready with a joke or a witty quotation to lighten the mood, but he stays apart now and they do not seek him out. The others’ attempts at levity fail to move him; nothing really seems funny anymore. Perhaps his sense of humour was more mortal than his body apparently is. He can no longer remember the last time he laughed, or even had a conversation that extended beyond bare practicalities.

Yusuf cannot help but seek out his undying counterpart, cannot fathom abandoning the duel between them even if it would be more sensible to concentrate his energies on enemies who will not recover so easily. But finding him and killing him has become a rote thing, as mechanical and empty as all the other actions that have lost their meaning in these long accursed days. Yusuf sleeps, he prays, he buries his comrades who fall and stay fallen, he stares unsleeping at the sky in the night as the injured moan around him, he kills the Frank, the Frank kills him, he dreams of strange women in strange clothes, nothing changes. Perhaps nothing will ever change. Perhaps that first death was in fact his true death; perhaps he offended Allah in some way and this is his punishment, to trudge endlessly into battle without hope of finding peace again. He thinks of the old Greek tale of a man condemned to have his liver pecked out by an eagle every day, only for it to regrow during the night so that his torment might continue anew in the morning. Perhaps Allah is not the god he has offended.

He thinks the deathless Frank is weary too. The man fights Yusuf no less capably than he did before, but the fire that burned in his eyes the first time they clashed is gone. It has been replaced by a hollow stare as he cuts through the others, if he cuts through them at all; more than once of late Yusuf has watched him take a blow he should have easily parried, or eschew an opportunity to land one, in a way that suggests disinterest in defeating his opponent rather than accident or incompetence. When he reaches Yusuf he comes alive a little more, meeting Yusuf’s eyes with a piercing gaze that seems almost like a question. _Do **you**_ _understand why we are like this? Do you have any idea what it means?_ he seems to ask, whether he is striking a killing blow or succumbing to one. Perverse though it is, these brief moments of shared disquiet have begun to feel more real to Yusuf than anything else.

So Yusuf sees the deathless Frank, and goes towards him, because what else is there to do? This day’s fighting is just about over; Yusuf had earlier fallen to some other invader’s attack and it must have been a particularly debilitating one because by the time he woke the bulk of both forces had moved off already. Most of the people around them are dying or dead. The Frank has probably already died today as well; he has lost his helmet and the blood matted in his hair looks too much to be someone else’s.

He has seen Yusuf too, but he does not move to meet him. The Frank’s position is no better or worse than Yusuf’s, so Yusuf wonders briefly why he seeks to maintain it, but he does not take a defensive posture either. He just stands there, sword hanging loose in his grasp, watching Yusuf approach. When Yusuf is a few paces away, the Frank lets his sword fall to the ground.

Yusuf grips his own blade reluctantly; the idea of any honour in all this seems faintly absurd, but nevertheless the prospect of striking down an unarmed man feels particularly obscene. Perhaps it is some sort of trick. But then he meets the Frank’s gaze, and sees in it no cunning, no satisfaction at a successful ruse. No anger, no enmity, only such a depth of despair as to equal his own turmoil.

The man speaks, and Yusuf’s thoughts are so far removed from such pleasant human things as literature or commerce that it takes him a moment to recognize the language as something that sounds a bit like Sabir and a bit like Latin but is not either.

“If you wish me to try to understand you, speak slower,” Yusuf says in Latin, assuming that if the man knew the traders’ tongue he would know enough to use it in circumstances such as these. Yusuf learned Latin for the old Roman texts and has read much more of it than he has spoken, though it has proven to be useful on a few occasions for dealing with a certain type of wealthy Frankish merchant who is too pretentious for Sabir.

A flash of surprise crosses the man’s face, replaced by a curious resignation that seems to say _yes of course, this too_.

“I will not fight you any longer,” the Frank replies, also in Latin. Judging by the careful, somewhat stilted way he pronounces the words, he is not completely comfortable in the language either, which is just as well, hopefully it means he will not start babbling too quickly for Yusuf to follow.

“Kill me again if you wish,” the Frank continues. “I will not stop you.”

“Why bother?” Yusuf asks, intrigued now. He lowers his weapon but does not relinquish it. “You will not stay dead. You are like me.”

At that, the man staggers as if struck, and murmurs something in that other language of his. Yusuf does not catch the words, but it sounds so much like his own prayers of late, a habitual entreaty without hope of an answer.

“I will not kill you any longer,” the Frank says, using Latin again. “You or any of yours.”

“Why not? Is killing –” Yusuf tries to remember one of the disparaging names the Franks use, wants to spit it out with derision, but nothing comes to mind, so he gives up and settles for the pronoun, “- _us_ not why you came here?”

The Frank looks curiously pained again.

“I came here expecting to kill demons with the shapes of men,” he says after a moment. “They said your people are the enemies of God and all that is good in creation. They said you are barely more than animals, that you worship desecration and know nothing of mercy or love.”

Yusuf waits; he has heard all this before, from the invaders who have learned just enough Arabic to shout abuse, from random passers-by in Frankish ports in better times. But the deathless Frank does not say it like the others say it.

“I came here expecting demons, and I found … people. Your women cradle their infants and laugh with their daughters and mourn their dead sons. You bleed and you tend your comrades’ wounds. You build beautiful cities. You sing beautiful songs. You speak _Latin_. You are not as they said, and this… this horror is not the holy work I came to do.” He rubs a hand across his face, smearing the blood and grime there. “I do not understand why God has given me this… whatever this is that makes me rise again after every death. Why he has given it to you too. But I can no longer believe that he means for us to destroy one another. Do what you will. Whatever you choose, I will not resist.”

He kicks the hilt of his sword towards Yusuf, as if Yusuf did not have his own blade still in his hand.

“I came here to defend the people of this city from the invaders who would slaughter them in their beds and drive them from their homes,” Yusuf says, because this is true. Because this Frank is one of them, has killed people here and surely also in Antioch and all along their wretched path to this place. Even if he does now understand himself to have been misled, even if he is no longer like the others in the same way that Yusuf is no longer like his own comrades. Even if he is, perhaps, different from most of the invaders in other ways too.

The man gives a nod of acknowledgement and then, like a puppet with its strings cut, drops to his knees. He looks so tired, so utterly lost, that invading Frank or not it stirs in Yusuf some forgotten ember of what it was to actually feel for another person. Without opening his eyes, the man tilts his head, baring his throat to the expected blow. But when Yusuf fails to strike, he does look up. What Yusuf sees in his eyes now is not quite a challenge, not quite an entreaty either. Another question, perhaps. _What now?_

Yusuf drops his sword. Though nothing compared to the invaders’ devastating folly, he has had his own delusions, if he is entirely honest with himself. The idea that one man and his sword could make any sort of real difference here seems laughable now, but he believed it so strongly once. If he had never met a Frank before, and everyone around him said he could do good in the world just by killing them, perhaps he would have believed that too.

He settles to sit cross-legged on the ground. The Frank could be back on his feet faster, probably, but what does it matter? Even if death were still a thing to fear, the Frank looks far too exhausted, both in body and soul, to move with such speed. Anyway, Yusuf does not think he was lying about his intention to stop fighting, for now at least. And the chance to talk with someone, even if he is a Frank, who shares Yusuf’s bizarre – condition? gift? curse? – is too enticing to pass up.

“Did you dream of me before we met?” Yusuf asks.

“Yes,” the Frank says. “From the first time I died. You, and…”

“Those women? The one with the axe and the one with…” Yusuf gestures vaguely and the Frank nods, understanding immediately.

“I imagined they must be angels, at first.”

“They angels and I a demon?” Yusuf asks, a little amused, and when was the last time he experienced that?

The man flushes, shakes his head. “I have been a fool,” he says.

Yusuf does not argue. “I do not know what they are,” he admits. “I have been to many places but I have never seen anything like them.”

“Perhaps they are like us,” the Frank suggests. They both consider this, and mutually conclude, without saying a word, that this is something they are not yet prepared to think on further.

“You said you came here too. Is this not your homeland, then?” the Frank asks.

“No. I come from Tunis,” Yusuf says, though he is not particularly surprised when the Frank looks blank. He wonders, not for the first time, how such an uneducated group of people ever even managed to find Jerusalem. Perhaps all this could have been avoided by hanging a few banners on some Roman ruins out in the desert and persuading everyone to tell the invaders _that_ was the city they sought. 

“In the Maghreb,” Yusuf clarifies, hoping that this at least will be understood, and the man nods. He goes on. “I was trading in Acre when we heard that the Franks who took Antioch were marching for Jerusalem. Some of us that knew how to fight decided to stay and help defend the city.”

“You do know how to fight,” the Frank agrees, his tone admiring.

“You are not without skill yourself,” Yusuf allows. “What is your name?”

“Nicolò. Yours?”

“Yusuf. Where do you come from, Nicolò?”

“Genoa. In, ah-”

“I know where Genoa is,” Yusuf interrupts, though he finds himself more charmed by the effort to be considerate than annoyed by the assumption that everyone is as ignorant as a Frank. “I was there once. Good bread.” Something that might be a smile briefly twists Nicolò’s lips. “About five years ago, I think. Maybe we passed one another in the street.”

“I think I would remember you,” Nicolò says. Which is ridiculous because five years ago they were both – Yusuf assumes – ordinary men with no reason at all to take any notice of one another; even as a foreigner Yusuf would hardly have stood out amongst all the other foreigners in the port or at the market. And yet, he realizes that he feels the same way. Even as he said it, it seemed impossible that they could ever have crossed paths without being drawn to one another as they have been these past weeks.

“Yes, I think I would remember you too,” Yusuf says. “What will you do now, Nicolò of Genoa, if you will no longer fight?”

“I do not know. But I think this will end soon, one way or the other. You are expecting reinforcements, are you not? And they have almost finished building the siege towers.”

‘They’, Yusuf notes, not ‘we’.

“What will you do, when it is over?” Nicolò asks.

“I have no idea,” Yusuf admits. Nicolò is right, about the reinforcements and the siege towers both. But until this moment he has not really considered that there could be anything else, that the interminable limbo of the last weeks could actually end.

Nicolò is right, and Nicolò is also swaying a little, as though he is about to faint. Without thinking, Yusuf rises to his knees and leans over, grabbing Nicolò’s shoulder to steady him. Nicolò gives a weak, grateful smile, and Yusuf does not pull away as quickly as he ought to.

“What is it?” Yusuf asks. The afternoon sun is intense, but Nicolò would never have managed to kill Yusuf if he were so prone to heat exhaustion as to suffer it just from sitting down outside. 

“Just a bit…” Nicolò frowns, evidently trying and failing to remember the right words in Latin. He says something in his own language, but Yusuf does not recognize it. He shakes his head and Nicolò tries again. “I have had little to drink. Not quite little enough to kill me, so the…” he gestures in lieu of naming their shared peculiarity, “…seems not to help.”

Ah. The defenders had blocked or poisoned all the wells near the city but outside its walls before the invaders arrived. Yusuf has heard stories of desperate men fighting viciously against their own supposed comrades for access to a paltry spring they found somewhere. Yusuf is on the whole unsympathetic – they could get fresh water aplenty if only they would give up the siege and leave – but remaining indifferent to the man before him is another matter. He makes a decision. A stupid one, most likely, but this conversation has made him feel more human than he has in weeks, and that merits a little human kindness.

Yusuf looks around again. The rest of the still-walking Franks have retreated to their camp now. Most of Yusuf’s fellow soldiers are back inside the walls already too, but the carts are out to collect the dead, with a few fighting men lingering to dissuade any Franks intent on looting or otherwise interfering. The carters usually have water with them for the men on watch.

“Come with me,” Yusuf says. Nicolò blinks, bewildered. “I will get you some water. Do not argue, Nicolò of Genoa, or I may yet change my mind.” Nicolò nods, and does not argue.

They both stand up. Yusuf collects his sword. Nicolò makes no move to collect his.

There is no real shelter to be found nearby, but the ground is not entirely featureless and Yusuf spots a place that is at least a little obscured by a small ridge and the gnarled stump of a long-dead olive tree.

“Wait here,” Yusuf says. “If anyone comes, play dead.” Nicolò nods again. He sits and tucks himself against the stump, angled so the bloodier side of his head will be the first thing anyone sees.

Yusuf moves away, makes a show of pacing around a bit like the other guards, and then approaches the nearest cart. There are two men with it, both of them occupied with peeling the body of a dead Frank off one of their own. The Arab is on his back, the Frank face-down over him; it might almost pass for a sleeping lovers’ embrace if not for all the blood. Yusuf wonders, fleetingly, if the pair killed one another the way he and Nicolò did so many times. If these two were to rise again and again, would they too eventually set down their weapons and talk?

“Drink for a thirsty man?” Yusuf asks.

“In the front,” one of the cart men says, gesturing with his chin.

Yusuf locates the water skin, slowly takes a swallow, and waits until the carters are both looking away to tuck it inside his overcoat instead of putting it back in the cart.

“Much obliged,” he says, and casually circles back towards the olive tree stump.

Yusuf finds Nicolò exactly as he left him, so still that he wonders for a moment if the man has expired of thirst after all. The notion is more unsettling than it has any right to be under the circumstances.

“Nicolò,” Yusuf says. Nicolò opens his eyes and straightens up. Yusuf holds out the water skin silently. Nicolò takes it and drinks deep, but stops sooner than Yusuf would have expected and offers it back.

“You must be thirsty too, Yusuf of Tunis,” Nicolò says, and Yusuf laughs in surprise. Is he so generous with his own lot? Maybe he is, and that is precisely why he is so dehydrated. Yusuf takes a small drink, because it seems rude to refuse entirely – what a day this has been, that he is now worrying about his manners in front of a Frank – and then pushes it back into Nicolò’s hands.

“Take the rest. You need it much more than I do.”

“Thank you,” Nicolò says. He sips more slowly now, careful not to make himself sick by downing too much too quickly. Even under all the blood and grime on his face, the pleasure he finds in the act of drinking after a long thirst is obvious. It feels almost improper to watch him, something too intimate about taking in the way his throat works and the little noises he makes, but Yusuf cannot bring himself to look away. Would someone watching Yusuf, basking as he is in this delicate respite from the long days of violence and isolation, see the same pleasure, the same relief?

Yusuf should leave. Join the other guards, go back inside the city with the carters when they have finished their task. And then what? Go back to the barracks, eat in silence, sleep if he can, and do it all again tomorrow? But not all. If Nicolò is done with fighting, presumably he will not be here tomorrow, and there will be no repeating of this strange, lovely reprieve. Which, now Yusuf thinks about it, raises another question.

“Why did you join the battle at all today, if you did not mean to fight?” he asks when Nicolò next lowers the water skin. “Surely some must stay back to guard your camp and build the towers.”

“They do,” Nicolò says, then drops his gaze and turns the water skin in his hands as if embarrassed. “But… I would not see you, staying in the camp. I thought… Whatever this is that makes our deaths impermanent, we are connected in it. There must be some purpose to it. I was wrong, when I thought I was meant to kill you. I have been wrong about so many things. I thought that perhaps putting myself at your mercy could be an act of contrition, a way to begin atoning for my mistakes. I hoped that perhaps you might understand something that I do not, or that we might find some understanding together…” he trails off, shakes his head. “Perhaps I am still a fool.”

“No more than I,” Yusuf says, and Nicolò looks up again. “I thought I was meant to kill you too, at first. And then I thought it was a punishment. What else could it be, to be set apart from my fellows to fight without end, with no one who might commiserate but an enemy bent on my destruction? Until you spoke to me today, I-”

Nicolò has been watching Yusuf, but suddenly his gaze shifts, focussing on something further away, and he mutters something in his own language with an intonation that suggests profanity.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò says, soft and urgent, “I think one of your comrades has noticed us. He is coming this way.”

“Soldier?”

“Yes. You should let him see you kill me, and go.”

He is probably right, and it is not as though the death would last; if anything Yusuf would need to be sure to get the other man away before Nicolò began breathing again. But the thought of striking him down now, like this, is abhorrent. Yusuf mutters a profanity of his own.

“I will not kill you in cold blood.”

“Will he not be suspicious? I would not have you-”

“Yusuf?” another voice calls in Arabic. “What are you doing?”

He recognizes the voice. Ibrahim, one of the others from Acre. Yusuf thought of him as a friend, once, but there is little hope that he will be understanding; he always hated the Franks more than most and that was before his brother died, slowly, from a stomach wound he suffered in one of the first battles.

“Play dead,” Yusuf hisses to Nicolò in Latin, and turns, shifting to block Ibrahim’s view of Nicolò as subtly as he can. “I’m glad to see you whole, friend,” he calls, switching to Arabic.

“And you, but what are you doing here with one of _them_?” Ibrahim asks.

“Checking that he’s dead. Are you as hungry as I am? Is it time to go back?”

“I’m sure he moved a moment ago,” Ibrahim says.

“Just the corpse settling,” Yusuf says, but the doubt is clear on Ibrahim’s face.

“I heard another voice, too,” Ibrahim says, and Yusuf notices now that his sword is not sheathed but still in his hand.

“A passing bird, perhaps,” Yusuf suggests.

“You have been acting so strangely of late, Yusuf. I thought it was only your way of coping with war, but…”

“This fight has changed me, it’s true,” Yusuf says, and as tense as the moment is, he has to struggle not to snicker at the understatement.

“Changed you into what, I wonder?” Ibrahim asks. He moves around Yusuf to peer more closely at Nicolò, who is playing a rather convincing corpse. Ibrahim looks him over, taking in the blood on his head with clear satisfaction, and then spits on his cheek. Yusuf holds his breath, but Nicolò does not react. Ibrahim starts to turn away, and Yusuf begins to hope, but then Ibrahim stops. And leans down, and takes the stoppered, still half-full water skin from Nicolò’s slack hands.

“Tell me, Yusuf, where did a dead Frank get this?” Ibrahim demands. They all know about the wells. Before Yusuf can think of an excuse, Ibrahim has dropped the water and raised his sword. “You’re conspiring with them, aren’t you! All those ‘near misses’… Is this some sort of message? A signal? Yusuf, _why_?”

“It’s not a message, I’m not conspiring with anyone, I just-”

“You just what?”

And Yusuf has no answer. What can he say? _I have been rising from the dead for weeks and in all that time speaking to this man is the only thing to make me feel alive._ He looks past Ibrahim, to Nicolò, whose eyes are open now, watching Yusuf keenly for any sign of what to do. He could make a show of killing Nicolò, could probably come up with some sort of plausible explanation for the water before Ibrahim has a chance to denounce him to their commanders, but what would be the point?

“He was thirsty, so I gave him water,” Yusuf says, because he has to say something. “That’s all.”

“What should you care that a Frank was thirsty? You said he was dead already! I don’t know what’s happened to you, Yusuf, but Rashid did not come here and die only for you to betray us to his killers!”

Ibrahim swings his sword and Yusuf only just gets his own up in time to block the blow. Ibrahim comes at him again and again, face twisted in grief and fury, and Yusuf parries as best he can. But he is unwilling fight back properly for fear of doing real harm, while Ibrahim has no such compunctions. When Yusuf puts a foot wrong and stumbles, Ibrahim does not hesitate to slash his throat.

The last thing Yusuf is aware of before it all goes dark is Nicolò, getting to his feet, face set in a cold determination like Yusuf has never seen on him before.

* * *

The first thing Yusuf sees on waking is, again, Nicolò. Now seated once more, and watching him intently.

The first thing he hears is Nicolò saying, quietly, “I did not kill him.”

It takes Yusuf a moment to understand what he means. Ibrahim. Ibrahim, who Yusuf notices now, lying on his side a few paces away. He appears to be unconscious, but breathing. His hands are bound behind his back with what looks like Nicolò’s sword belt, his feet tied and mouth covered with strips of cloth that Nicolò must have torn from whatever he is wearing under his mail coat.

“I do not know how certain he will be of your death,” Nicolò goes on. “There was a great deal of blood. But he did not have a chance to examine you. You may be able to persuade him that the wound was not fatal.”

Yusuf sits up, coughs, spits the blood from his mouth. Nicolò silently passes him the water skin. Yusuf swirls a bit in his mouth, spits that out too, drinks a little.

“He thought this was some sort of signal to your people,” Yusuf says, indicating the water. “Water skin on a dead Frank means… I do not know what he thought it might mean. But he thinks I am a traitor.”

“I am sorry,” Nicolò says. “I know you did not wish to hurt him-”

“Was I so obvious?”

A hint of a smile. “I have watched you fight many times, Yusuf of Tunis. But I did not know what he would do, if he would leave your body or bring it back with him, and I thought that you should have a choice.”

A choice. Kill Ibrahim after all, let everyone believe he died during the battle, or fell victim to a not-so-dead-as-he-appeared Frank after it? No, absolutely not. Try to convince him – or all the others at least – that nothing unusual happened here, that anything he thought he saw or heard was just confusion brought on by a blow to the head from that not-so-dead-as-he-appeared Frank? Maybe. But Ibrahim will not be the only one to have noticed Yusuf’s strangeness lately, and the empty houses of Jerusalem’s expelled Christian residents are a stark illustration of the lengths to which the authorities will go to avoid any risk of treachery. What would happen if they decided to execute him, only for him to wake again and again? And even if it were possible, a return to things as they were does not feel like much of a choice. More like surrender, like succumbing to a tide that would sweep him back into that numbing sea of alienation in which he has been drowning these last weeks. But if not that, then what?

Ibrahim stirs a little, sure to wake up soon. Nicolò notices as well, but says nothing, just watches Yusuf. Nicolò’s eyes look like a sea too, Yusuf thinks, but not a sea for drowning. A cool, pleasant sea, a place of relief from the heat on a stifling summer day. A sea to carry a ship, away from an old life that no longer fits, off to something new and unknown.

Yusuf makes a decision. A mad one, perhaps. But it feels right in a way that nothing else has since the first time he died.

“I mean to leave this place,” Yusuf tells Nicolò. “Will you come with me?”

Nicolò does not hesitate. “Yes. Where will we go?” he asks.

“A good question for a later time,” Yusuf says. “But you should take that off,” he indicates Nicolò’s armour, a mail coat that looks like it was never of the best quality and is riddled with damage now. “Too distinctive.”

Nicolò nods and immediately begins stripping it off. Yusuf stands and walks over to Ibrahim, who is awake and starting to struggle.

“I’m sorry it came to this,” Yusuf tells him in Arabic, and means it. “I don’t think there’s anything I could say to make you understand. But please believe that there is no conspiracy, and that I wish you nothing but the best. Farewell, my friend.”

Whatever Ibrahim tries to say in return is muffled by the cloth in his mouth, but from the look on his face, it is unlikely to be much other curses levelled at Yusuf, and probably his ancestors and hypothetical descendants too. Yusuf checks the belt binding Ibrahim’s hands; it should hold long enough, but the leather is in a poor state, cracking in a few places already, so he ought not to have too much difficulty freeing himself after they are gone.

Nicolò is out of his armour now, left with a tattered tunic and a stained padded coat which would not exactly pass for the local fashion but is at least much less conspicuous than his mail. The coat is mottled with rips and holes, some mended and some not, all the places where the armour failed to stop a weapon. Was one of those his first death? How many of them is Yusuf responsible for? He thinks of his own efforts to hide the evidence of his fleeting injuries, and is struck by the image of Nicolò huddled in some quiet corner of the Franks’ camp, trying to clean and stitch up a bloodied gash in his coat so no one will notice that his clothing bears the scars of wounds that his body shows no sign of. 

“I have an idea, for tonight at least,” Yusuf tells him. Nicolò nods again, seemingly content to trust in whatever plan Yusuf has devised.

The cart men are heading back now, the guards following. If any notice Yusuf and Nicolò moving away, neither towards the city gates nor the Franks’ camp, they are not sufficiently concerned to pursue. With every step, Yusuf feels lighter, freer, as though a weight has been lifted from his chest.

He leads them towards one of the villages near the city. Like all the others, it will be empty now, the inhabitants having retreated to the safety of Jerusalem’s walls before the invaders arrived.

“We hid the well there instead of poisoning it,” Yusuf explains, “I think I can find it again. We can wash, at least.”

“That would be nice,” Nicolò says, scrunching up his face in a way that makes some of the dried blood flake off. The sight is not, objectively, _that_ funny, but it makes Yusuf want to laugh anyway and so he does, loudly. Nicolò looks startled for a moment and then he smiles, and then he starts deliberately contorting his face into all sorts of ridiculous expressions, laughing too, until both of them are doubled over and howling. Apart from the simple joy of laughter, Yusuf feels something like the giddy satisfaction of a young boy discovering that the new neighbours’ child likes the same games he does.

They settle, eventually, into a comfortable silence, and keep going. The village is as Yusuf remembers it, just a small collection of houses and a few other buildings clustered at the foot of a hill, though its emptiness is more striking without a half dozen other soldiers bustling about. The well is outside the village proper, a little ways up the slope. They had taken down the enclosing wall, wedged a few larger stones into the opening, and strewn brush and gravel about the place to make it seem like any other heap of rock. But knowing what he is looking for, Yusuf can pick out the path from the village to the well from the smooth-worn stones in the ground along the way. Shifting the boulders with only the two of them is rather more difficult than putting them in place was, but they manage it. A brief search of the village environs turns up a bucket, a length of rope, and a couple of rags to use as wash cloths. 

They both drink first, and then strip down to their drawers and take turns pouring the water over themselves to carry away the blood and sweat and dust. Yusuf, having washed just this morning, finishes sooner than Nicolò, who has probably not had access to this much water in weeks. Nicolò scrubs at himself with quick, efficient motions, but watching him bathe still feels at once enticing and intrusive in the same way as watching him drink did earlier, and Yusuf turns away, tries to force himself to focus on rinsing the blood from his tunic.

It will not really come clean with only water, but the fabric was a ruddy colour to begin with so the stains should not stand out too much. Still, they will have to get new clothes somehow. Yusuf’s purse is, of course, safe in the barracks in Jerusalem along with everything else he did not bring into battle with him. Nicolò is only slightly better equipped. He does have his purse – “Whatever happened today, I did not expect to return to the camp,” he had explained when he untied it from its place under his coat – which contains a small knife and a few other odds and ends that may prove useful, but as for coin there are only some tiny coppers from Genoa that would be worth more as scrap metal than currency here. So the lack of money will be challenging. If they can get back to Acre, Yusuf might be able to persuade one of the other merchants to grant him some credit, but until then… After a while Nicolò’s voice interrupts his wandering thoughts.

“Your back,” Nicolò says. “May I?”

Yusuf is unsure what he means but nods anyway, without turning. After a moment he feels a wet rag on his shoulder, on the side where Ibrahim had cut his throat. Ah, he must have missed some blood there. Nicolò sweeps the rag over Yusuf’s skin with astonishing delicacy, nothing at all like the brisk practical way he washed himself. Can these hands, tending to Yusuf so gently now, really be the same ones that only the other day drove a sword into his body? Yusuf relaxes into the soft touches, and finds himself disappointed when Nicolò pats his shoulder more firmly and says,

“There, done.” 

“Your turn,” Yusuf tells him, and Nicolò obligingly turns around. Only now it occurs to Yusuf that he had not even hesitated to present his own back to someone who, just this morning, he still thought of as an enemy. Not that being stabbed – in the back or otherwise – really matters these days, but the instincts remain. Apparently Yusuf’s instincts do not consider Nicolò a threat any longer either.

Nicolò has managed to clean his back well enough on his own, but there is still some gore clinging to his hair and scalp, so Yusuf sets about carefully working it out with his fingers and more water. Over these last weeks he has become accustomed to washing the stains of injury from skin that has already healed without a trace, but the strangeness of it comes back with another’s flesh under his hands. Is this why Nicolò was so gentle? Did he simply forget that there would be no open wound, no aching bruise, not even a strained muscle underneath the blood? Or has he, like Yusuf, felt so disconnected from his erstwhile comrades in these past weeks that any opportunity for human contact without violence is a thing to savour? Or is such tenderness his natural way of being, and the brutality of battle the aberration?

A gurgling sound that must be Nicolò’s empty stomach snaps Yusuf from his reverie this time. He runs his fingers through Nicolò’s hair a final time to tidy it a little and steps back.

“Let us see if we can find something to eat,” he says.

They leave their clothes spread on the rocks to dry and go down into the village again. Yusuf’s expectations are not high; anything substantial that the residents did not take with them when they left has probably long since been scavenged, if not by the Franks then by animals. They pick through the storerooms first, and then, with some reluctance, search the houses. Nicolò says nothing, but judging by the way he meticulously puts every empty sack and jar back just as he found it, he shares Yusuf’s discomfort with rummaging through strangers’ homes.

The fruits of their efforts amount to a handful of olives someone must have missed at the bottom of a deep jar, and a piece of singed bread abandoned at the back of an oven. They sit outside to eat, on the ground in the shade of one of the buildings. The bread is hard as a rock; Nicolò scrapes the worst of the char off with his knife and they soak it in water from the well to soften it enough to chew. Nicolò makes no complaint but Yusuf still feels a ludicrous urge to apologize for the paltry spread, as if Nicolò were a guest he has invited to his home without adequate preparation.

“We can find something better tomorrow,” Yusuf says.

Nicolò begins to say something but stops himself, looks down, starts picking at some imaginary dirt beneath his fingernails. Without thinking, Yusuf reaches out and touches his hand to still the uneasy fidgeting.

“Tell me?” Yusuf asks. Nicolò meets Yusuf’s eyes, his own guarded at first, but he must be reassured by what he sees in Yusuf’s gaze.

“This is already better than I had dared to hope for,” Nicolò says quietly, and it is clear that he does not mean the stale soggy bread and meagre olives.

“I had not even thought to hope, before you set down your sword,” Yusuf says, and he sees, in Nicolò’s face, the mirror of both every desolate, despairing hour since his own first death, and the awe and wonder of no longer being alone in it.

He has not taken his hand away from Nicolò’s yet, and Nicolò turns his now so that their fingers align, fingertips and palms pressed together. Yusuf thinks he ought to pull back, make some excuse to move away, and then he thinks: Why? He does not _want_ to move away, does not _want_ to break contact. Certainly, it is not normal to share a meal and confess one’s anguish and thrill in the innocent press of hands with a person who has only just stopped being a mortal enemy. But what does that matter now? If anything were normal they would not be sitting here together, would never have met at all. Yusuf would be dead and Nicolò would be dead and their hands would be cold and rotting in the earth, not warm and pulsing with the rhythms of their beating hearts.

Yusuf has seen Christians pray with their own two hands posed like this, but not two people joining hands in the same manner. Is there some symbolic meaning behind this gesture in Nicolò’s mind? Or does he simply need to touch? Yusuf remembers suddenly how lost he had looked before, kneeling there in the dust, waiting for Yusuf to kill him. How must it have been for him these last weeks, to be alone not only with his incomprehensible immortality but also with his doubts about the purpose that brought him here in the first place? To be so desperate that giving himself over to whatever Yusuf decided to do with him, with no way of predicting that that would be conversation and not a glut of vengeful cruelty, seemed the only option? He could not have known that Yusuf was desperate too, that Yusuf would find Nicolò’s company as much a remedy to his own misery as that pilfered water was to Nicolò’s thirst. And still he did it, and still he has asked for nothing but this, a simple touching of hands.

Yusuf slowly, deliberately lets his thumb slip off Nicolò’s to stroke the side of his index finger and the soft skin between finger and thumb. He hears Nicolò’s sharp intake of breath, feels him shudder, and before Yusuf can begin to worry that he misjudged and this was too much, Nicolò moves abruptly to knit their fingers together and clutches Yusuf’s hand like some precious thing he fears will be torn away if he does not hold on tightly enough.

Yusuf returns the pressure.

“You were right, I think,” Yusuf says. “Whatever made us like this, it brought us together too. I am glad that it did.”

“I only wish that the dreams had shown me more of you,” Nicolò says. “If I had first seen you laugh or heard you speak, I do not think I would ever have believed that God could want me to harm you.”

Yusuf swallows, moved. He strokes Nicolò’s finger again, and Nicolò sweeps the pad of his own thumb across Yusuf’s knuckle and down towards his wrist. Struck by a sudden, overwhelming need to see Nicolò smile, Yusuf says,

“Ah, Nicolò, then let us both be grateful that they did not let you hear me snore.”

Yusuf manages to keep his face serious while Nicolò repeats the last word to himself, obviously trying to remember what the Latin means, until it clicks and he bursts out laughing. His grin is every bit as broad as Yusuf had hoped.

“I look forward to hearing it now,” Nicolò says. “I am told I sometimes pass wind loudly in my sleep,” he adds.

“A fine chorus we shall make in the night,” Yusuf says, grinning back at him.

In fact, when they do eventually settle in to rest – no more than an arm’s length apart, on a heap of straw in the empty goat shed, because neither wants to use the villagers’ beds – it proves to be the soundest, sweetest sleep Yusuf has had in weeks. In the morning, he opens his eyes to the sight of Nicolò, already awake but still laying there beside him, dishevelled hair full of straw, face relaxed and content, watching him. And for the first time in a very long time, waking up feels not like the resumption of a burden but rather like the casting off of moorings, with a sparkling sea of possibilities spread out before them both.


End file.
